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In Wild-Card Play-In Game, It’s Win or You’re Out

Bud Selig, by his nature, is a worrier. Nearly every day, from his office in downtown Milwaukee, 30 floors above Lake Michigan, Selig frets about rainouts and ratings and attendance across the major leagues. He laments his frequent criticisms from the news media, too.

On Thursday, Selig, the commissioner, took a break from all that. He believes that he earned it. Selig reported to his office, but without his usual stress.

“This has been spectacular,” Selig said in a telephone interview. “I’m relaxed. I’ll worry again tomorrow.”

Selig will watch from home Friday as his latest legacy item, the wild-card play-in game, unfolds in Atlanta and Arlington, Tex. For all of the strife of his two decades as commissioner — a strike that canceled the 1994 World Series, a steroids scandal that mutated the record books — Selig has now overseen two expansions of the playoff format. Both have succeeded.

Through 1968, the winners of each league met in the World Series. From 1969 through 1993, the winners of the East and West divisions met in a championship series. Starting with the 1995 postseason, under Selig, the field doubled from four teams to eight, including three division winners and a wild-card team from each league.

Now, two wild cards in each league will meet in a knockout game for the right to advance to the division series. The new rules give two more teams the chance for the title, while emphasizing the importance of winning the division.

“When I did the first one, there was a lot of criticism,” Selig said. “I was very confident, but you just never know, and it worked out better than I thought. This one, after the end of last year, there were people who said, ‘Why do you want to change?’ But I have to say, it’s worked out better than I ever would have dreamed.”

The play-in games, of course, have not actually taken place. But for Selig, the new format was mostly about the pennant races, and giving more fans a reason to pay attention down the stretch. His office announced Thursday that the 30 teams drew 74,859,268 fans this season, the most since 2008 and a 2 percent increase over last season.

The final day of the 2011 regular season, with four games taking place simultaneously to decide the last two playoff spots, outdid the 2012 finale for drama. But the new format did have the intended effect of enhancing the integrity of competition.

The Oakland Athletics had already clinched a playoff spot before their game with the Texas Rangers on Wednesday. But they played with passion, knowing that a victory would give them the West crown and spare them the capriciousness of a one-game playoff.

Photo

Rangers Ballpark being readied for Friday’s wild-card game between Texas and Baltimore.Credit
Richard W. Rodriguez/Associated Press

The Yankees had also a clinched playoff spot before their series with the Boston Red Sox, but their sweep took on added meaning because they now advance directly to the division series. The Baltimore Orioles will meet the Rangers for the right to play the well-rested Yankees in Game 1 of the division series on Sunday. The St. Louis Cardinals play the Braves in the N.L. game, with the Washington Nationals awaiting.

While one-game playoffs are now an official part of the postseason, they are nothing new. Teams that were tied at the end of a season once played a best-of-three playoff — which counted as part of the regular season — to determine the league champion. Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard round the world,” which famously lifted the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, came after the teams had split the first two playoff games.

New York fans remember the one-game playoffs in 1978, with Bucky Dent and the Yankees upending the Red Sox at Fenway Park, and in 1999, with Al Leiter and the Mets stifling the Reds in Cincinnati. There have been six other one-game playoffs in the last 50 years, most recently in 2009, when the Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Tigers in a thriller at the Metrodome.

“I remember watching that game and being like, ‘Whoa, that’s got to be intense,’ ” Baltimore reliever Darren O’Day said on Monday, when the Orioles still had a chance to win the East. “Is the wild card a consolation? It’s an accomplishment for us to have such a big turnaround this season and do so many things well for so long to be in the playoffs. But our ultimate goal is to win the East and put ourselves in a better position to go all the way.”

After losing two of their last three games, the Orioles’ 93-win season could come to an abrupt end on Friday, without them getting even a single home playoff game for their fans. But they could have avoided that fate by finishing first.

Two years ago, as General Manager Brian Cashman later acknowledged, the Yankees prioritized resting some of their veterans over winning the division, knowing that the wild card was already theirs. The only penalty, under the old format, was that the wild-card winner would not have home-field advantage in the playoffs. The Yankees won their 2010 division series, while the East champions, the Tampa Bay Rays, lost theirs.

“That was one of the weaknesses of the old plan,” Selig said. “People felt — and we discussed this in my 14-member committee a lot — that teams win their division over 162 games, and they weren’t being rewarded as much as they should. Well, now they are.”

Because the 2012 schedule had been finalized before the playoffs were expanded, baseball had to shoehorn the wild-card games into October, leaving room for only one day off in the division series. That means that the higher-seeded teams will open on the road for Games 1 and 2 before hosting the final three games.

Next year, the division series will return to the preferred 2-2-1 format. Selig could have waited until 2013 to add the extra wild cards, but he said he was glad he did not.

“Look, it isn’t going to be perfect this year, but life isn’t perfect,” Selig said. “I know the schedule was made out, and I know it’s going to be better in ’13. But I’m so grateful I did it. All the clubs wanted it, and I wanted it.”

Now it is upon us, and Selig can go back to worrying — although probably not very much. The forecast calls for only a 20 percent chance of rain on Friday in Arlington and Atlanta.